The cork board in Dr. Horn’s shack was changed in the Steam version.
The purple hat and “Quaff…” in the top left corner used to be a photo of a guy with a fake mustache drawn on.
The dog in the middle used to be some generic document.
Edit: ‘quaff to maek pingun’ seems to be an in-joke amongst the developers.
Went through all the ‘narrator’ audio files and VOX “8” file one more time to quickly check if they didn’t have any metadata like the qecode.ogg (they don’t).
Does anyone know how to read metadata on .vtf files? If I understand correctly metadata is not an officially supported feature but nonetheless is quite possible? I am using VTFedit.
I looked into ‘high security’ wall panel screens, seen throughout the game but notably one behind Dr.Horns desk in Lab D. There’s a lot here to give me hope and a task tommorow. In short there is a set of special versions of this modified slightly (darker and squatter), with the name “panel_safe” rather than simply “wallunit_display”. There is also (for both versions), a set of images (stored as frames) for recognizing a proper passcode entry - of three ‘digits’. I’ve never seen this version of the display in game, and I’ve been paying attention to these weird little things whenever they’ve shown up, truly from the start of my first playthrough in the Steam version (they really do stand out, mostly due to the much higher than normal pixel density). There is also a distorted/failed version (one of several, the rest of which are fairly common in game) i’ve never seen (kind of bad looking hard cut to snowfield static, actually looks like nothing but an early version of the really cool final versions they wound up with, to me).
I hope there may be some sequence of actions to take to trigger this ‘safe’ (if that’s what it is) in Dr. Horns office to open (exactly like the undertow navy seal copypasta easter egg, which is now fully known). First I’ll check and look hard at it, and one other version in the final hall of QE before the ambush, to see which if either is the ‘safe’ version (i mention the second one in the final hall because it is attached to a different type of hardware than normal, off-center in a utility-box type thing), Note that it’s not just the picture above, or just a blinking version or whatever (which would make sense as a passive environmental feature, as though someone else had entered the code) - in the actual .vtf there are frames for each individual box being marked (only useful for the player seeing the code being entered, such as when entering it themselves).
The interactive ‘code accepted’ panel is the first one you see when you get off the tram. The guard uses it to let you in.
@faed I’d love to see a high-res, up close version of that corkboard. I can’t make out the details on that “plans to take over the world” thing in the screenshot =(
I apologize if this has already been mentioned but with such a long thread and clues that spin my head it’s difficult to keep up.
I had a thought about the references to boats from the reddit altough I’m not certain it’s connected to the ARG. Maybe the take on boats as in ships is to literal. Instead it could be that it’s B.O.A.T.S. Also considering that elements has been talked about before it could be letters for elements, B O At S.
Don’t know if it’s any useful but it was just a thought that popped up.^^
That’s just a little Half Life Easter Egg, it describes Breen’s plan to take over the world by becoming friends with Aliens and living in a big tower.
Don’t forget we also have the 16-digit number from the first section of the ARG. It’s unlikely that it’s random, therefore it’s possibly used later in the ARG. Converted to hex, that gives us a potential 16-byte initialization vector (IV) for the Rijndael cypher.
EDIT: One conundrum I’m running into is whether or not to convert the numbers to hexadecimal as a decimal or string input–for instance, if the 21-digit number is meant to be added to the Hex Code, then it would need to be converted as a string; on the other hand, for the 16-digit number from Codes A-D to be used as an IV, it would need to be converted as a decimal.
Ugh, even with these thoughts of figuring out the IV and whatnot, I’m still at a complete loss over this thing. Without any kind of built-in confirmation, we really have no way of knowing if we’re even on the right path. I think I’m throwing in the towel for now.
The Hex Code is hexadecimal number therefore you need to convert the 21-digit number also into a hex number if you want to add it. Why do you want to convert it into a String other than for output purposes codewise?
Do I miss something ?
Btw. sry for quote errors. I’m on phone right now.
Right, but you can convert it as a string or a decimal. They result in different outputs of varying lengths.
Jeeze, this thread is just starting to feel like a waiting game for the next bit of ARG to come out.
Yeah, the size of the pool of clues has become too large to make much sense of it–the answer is there, but it’s too obscured by the info dump. Storm has probably been trying to help us this whole time, but the puzzle gained too many pieces over time.
I really feel like it’s not a problem of too few or too many leads, but of a small number of people constantly turning discussion back towards ridiculous numerological manipulations of the HALOS File code. I’d actually go so far as to suggest/request that we just start a whole new thread, to mark the occasion of the Steam release, with an admin/dev notice to seek new clues in the new version. This one is like half numerology bs, and seems to be destined to continue the same way despite the discovery of several interesting new clues in the Steam release.
But, as I’ve pointed out a few times before: we still don’t have confirmation whether or not the old mod version still contains new ARG clues to be discovered or not. We don’t know if we should limit ourselves to the Steam release.
The thing I was really trying to rail against was continued emphasis on cracking the hex code. I think at this point it’s pretty clear it was just a bullshit holding puzzle. And even if there is some potential solution it’s certainly not going to come down to finding every possible string of numbers every referenced in TNG or Bugs or wherever that can be manipulated to resemble 21. This is pure numerology, the kind of thing we joke about when it comes to other games (‘HL3 CONFIRMED’), but it’s very strong in this thread (seriously about half the posts, it seems).
I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s in the nature of the ARG to give us an unsolvable puzzle–that leads to total loss of faith in the creator. Red herrings are one thing, but introducing a puzzle that blatantly can’t be solved is bad form. If you’re referring to the randomness of the hex code, messages in AES or other block ciphers will often have extremely high entropy to reduce the chance that the cipher will be cracked–at least in terms of the initialization vector or key.
I can safely confirm that this is not a part of the ARG.
In web development, adding a question mark followed by a random string is the easiest way to make sure you bypass browser cache, making sure everyone sees the new version of the page.
TL;DR: a simple trick to bypass browser cache
Ah. Makes sense now.
Anyone think these are the “Boats” they’re talking about?
Source?
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
